POLTICAL ANIMAL

A-Lister Responds to Calls for Him to Run for Office

His co-stars think he should give it a shot.

Ben Affleck is sharing his unfiltered thoughts about potentially running for political office someday.

The Oscar winner, 54, is promoting his new Netflix film Animals, which he directed and stars in as a political candidate alongside Scandal star Kerry Washington. Washington told Variety that the cast tried to convince him to make the fictional role a reality.

“We keep telling him that he should, but he doesn’t want to,” the actress, 49, said.

Affleck responded in his own cover story for the outlet on Wednesday. “There’s a reason why political stories are often chosen as parables for moral compromise,” he said.

“You really get thrust up into the contrast between the ideal version of us and how we should be in our lives and the way it is,” Affleck added. “It’s a very depressing world, in my opinion. Tawdry. And that has no appeal to me.”

It’s not the first time Affleck has responded to those encouraging him to put his name on a non-awards season ballot. In 2012, he addressed speculation that he might run for the Senate on Face the Nation. Avoiding a denial at the time, Affleck said he was “not one to get into conjecture.”

Washington insisted that Affleck could be a good candidate, if he were willing. “We’re in a place in our politics right now where, I mean, anything is possible, but I would hope that the people who are running for office want to be there, and he has been very explicit in saying that he doesn’t want to run for office until he does,” she said.

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Affleck has remained engaged politically, however, using his star power to lobby Congress on issues like Alzheimer’s research and to support his nonprofit in the Congo.

In Animals, Affleck plays a candidate running for Mayor of Los Angeles whose son is kidnapped for ransom. He and his wife, Abigail, played by Kerry Washington, are forced to take extreme and desperate measures to get him back, according to the film’s description.

Politics isn’t the only thing the actor is swearing off. He also told the outlet why social media will never be for him, though he admits he tried it.

“I got banned from Instagram twice for impersonating myself,” he said. “I had six followers. It was my kids and some of their friends. It was just an excuse for me to look at their social media accounts. There used to be a time when everything you said or did wasn’t on the permanent record. As you get older, you become aware of what that means. I experienced the whole world and had a whole life in private. I have a real sense of how valuable that is.”

The star also declared that having an internet presence can ruin an actor’s mystique.

“I think Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep and Viola Davis and Denzel Washington are brilliant actors,” he said. “It doesn’t help me appreciate their movies to see what they had for lunch. I realize I sound like an old, out-of-touch person, but I believe that as an actor, you have to maintain an illusion.”

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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